Oklahomans come together to do justice to Colony with new museum
After 37 years of service as a justice on the Oklahoma Supreme Court — including one term as chief justice — Yvonne Kauger can likely go anywhere in the world for vacation.
She is the most senior member of the nine justices currently sitting on Oklahoma’s highest court, and was the second of only four women ever appointed.
Four years ago, two of her best friends offered to meet up with her at any destination to celebrate her 80th birthday.
Kauger, an Oklahoma City resident, refused.
“I didn’t want to go on some expensive trip. I wanted to work on Colony,” she said.
Although born in New Cordell, she grew up in Colony, one of the oldest towns in western Oklahoma. Colony is located about 80 miles west of Oklahoma City in Washita county.
“I wanted to spend my money here, in Colony, and give my time,” she said.
Colony’s mayor, Lonnie Yearwood, a retired CPA for Oklahoma, feels the same way.
Yearwood returned to Colony in 2009. Since then, he and Kauger have created ways to try to revitalize the town of about 137 and present its history.
Working together, they opened up the Colony Museum on Sept. 4 in the restored Fred Kauger Building, 105 E. Seger Street, which was built by Kauger’s great grandfather in 1924.
The museum’s purpose is to collect and display artifacts showcasing the town’s history.
“If history’s not preserved, it gets lost,” said Yearwood, who is credited with the museum’s conception.
In 1886, Yearwood’s great grandfather, John H. Seger, and about 30 Native Americans established the Seger Colony, an agricultural community on Cobb Creek.
Kauger’s great grandfather, Fred Kauger, arrived in Colony in the 1890s and developed the business district on Main Street in the 1920s.
The museum’s beginnings are modest, with about 50 artifacts on display in about 900 square feet in three rooms. But there’s hundreds more items stored elsewhere for later display. It’s one of the newest of about 200 or so small museums in the state.
Bob Blackburn, a retired executive director of the Oklahoma History Center, praised their efforts.
“Rural Oklahoma is where most of Oklahoma history happens. We’ve been collecting it in the cities, but still need to collect it in rural Oklahoma,” he said
“People need to know that their lives were meaningful. The towns need that. We need to preserve the memory for those who are still there, and keep those who have left, coming back,” said Blackburn who worked as a consultant for the museum.
The artifacts on display here are not on loan from a museum thousands of miles away. Instead, they come from the attics, homes and barns of the people who live here, and about half represent the area’s Native American heritage.
Blackburn is especially excited by the original horse (or mule) drawn Van Brunt grain drill with an intact tool box. Farmer Ron Lowry, a descendent of two pioneer families and a member of the Town Council who still works a Centennial farm, found the drill, which is about 100 years old, buried in hay last year at a nearby farm sale.
Large replicas of the town newspaper, “Colony Courier” from 1909 are displayed. A one year’s subscription was $1. A hundred pounds of ice could be purchased for 75 cents.
Also included, a full-length buckskin Cheyenne dress handmade by Margaret Riggs Curtis and Jeanette Riggs Howlingcrane; Jim VanDeman (Delaware) loaned his flute display. A mask by artist Patrick Riley is here, along with the 100 or so tea pot collection from Kauger’s mother, Alice. Bead work by Arapaho artists Grace Nowlin and Ida and Doris Lumpmouth are included. A Caddo bow with arrows by Phillip Cross is mounted on the wall.
For those arriving by horse, there’s a new, hand-carved, pine hitching post outside the. museum, courtesy of Jerry Weichel. There’s a grinding stone and shards from the McLemore archaeological site dating from the 1300s, sculpture by Ted Creepingbear (Kiowa/Pawnee) and pottery by Jeri Cross Redcorn (Caddo), whose work sat in the Oval Office of former President Barack Obama.
Pulling it all together
Blackburn says collections like this bring people — and towns — together, especially during difficult times.
But pulling it all together wasn’t easy. Blackburn recalls the first time he walked into the nearly 100-year-old Kauger building, realizing he was expected to bring it back to life as a museum.
“I kind of gulped when I first walked inside,” he admitted in a phone interview.
Funding for the project came from various grants, personal donations from the community — including Kauger and Yearwood — and grants totaling $40,000 from the Oklahoma State Historical Society. Volunteers oversee the museum activities, and the city owns the building. There is no entrance fee to visit.
Blackburn collected the history of the artifacts, created the text, and wrote the stories for the information panels which hang on the inside walls.
Without a full time staff, the museum is not always accessible to visitors.
A walking tour for Colony is also in the works, and should be available, perhaps by Thanksgiving, but no later than Christmas.
Gallery of the Plains Indian
The Colony museum is not the only museum in town.
Kauger, who probably has one of the finest private Native American art collections in the state, had become annoyed at having to travel to Taos and Santa Fe to view work by Oklahoma artists.
In 1982, she opened Gallery of the Plains Indian in the old post office building built by her great grandfather in 1923 to showcase work by the state’s Native American artists.
The friendships she made lasted throughout her life, and in 1984, she was adopted into the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribe.
She’s the co-founder of Oklahoma City’s Red Earth organization and established the Sovereignty Symposium, a national symposium on American Indian law. She curated more than 70 works of Native American art that fill the Oklahoma Judicial Center near the capitol, and then produced a coffee table book about it.
With the two museums now open in Colony, and plans for more, Kauger and Yearwood are hoping the town’s history and culture will be remembered here for generations to come.
For more information, go online to www.colonyok.com.